A Dog-Feed-Dog World--July 29, 2020

A Dog-Feed-Dog World--July 29, 2020

"Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor." [Romans 12:10]

This is the secret of life: you spend your energy and time building up others... and we (the ones you have just been building up) spend our energy and time building you up.  

We do it together, for one another, in a never-ending dance of giving and receiving, so that no one ever runs empty, and no one ever gets bloated with too much.  We extend the grace of caring for someone else at times, and we also practice the graceful skill of letting other care for us.  And because each of us is never focused on themselves alone, the great circle continues on and on, looping around and around itself like a kid with a spirograph.

Or, to use Paul's phrasing for it, we "outdo one another in showing honor."  Notice the way the apostle sets that up to be more than just a quid-pro-quo transaction.  With a tit-for-tat sort of deal, there are only two moves to make, and then the relationship melts away: I do good for you, and then you pay me back with equal good so that we're even-Steven.  We both walk away dusting off our hands like something has ended.  But that's not how Paul envisions the community of Jesus.  Instead of paying one another back exactly in honor, he invites us to keep going beyond what has been shown to us, in a delightfully upside-down version of a competition.  Instead of each of us trying to be better than the other, to have more, to know more, to get more recognition, to look tougher or smarter or more like a "winner" than the other, we are dared to go to greater lengths to build each other up and to show honor to each other... instead of needing always to make ourselves look better or make sure I (and only I) get the attention).

That's really why I picture this sort of like a spirograph, if you remember that old drawing toy with the gear shaped pieces and colored pens that drew patterns that spiraled into rosettes and daisy-like patterns.  The design of the little tooth-encircled shapes was such that you never drew just a mere single circle--the pen never ended exactly where it started, but once your hand comes back around to where you thought you began, you actually start a new loop, just ahead of where the first one was.  And from there, another, and another, precessing like a gyroscope around the page until you have an ornate geometric pattern. It doesn't just stop with one loop, but one loop creates the next and the next and the next.  That's something like the kind of chain reaction of goodness Paul envisions.

And, as I say, it is just the opposite of the conventional wisdom in the world around us.  All around we hear voices that tell us it's a "dog-eat-dog world" out there, and that everyone's got to look out for Number One.  "You have to live that way," they say.  "You have to put you and your group first, and you have to consistently put your own interests first. That's just the way of the world," they insist.  They tell us, these faceless but omnipresent voices, that you've got to look at life as though everyone else is in competition with you for scarce resources, and if you don't get them, they'll get you.  So in every situation, they say, you have to make yourself look greater, make others look weaker or lesser, and whatever you do, don't dare give honor to someone else.  Don't give credit to those whose shoulders you stand on.  Don't acknowledge that even your opponents can be right, or decent, or principled.  Don't admit to being wrong--ever.  And don't ever give praise to someone else unless they have already given praise (and bigger praise, at that) to you first.  That's exactly how the big, loud (and obnoxious) voices of conventional wisdom teach us to see the world--and they sometimes fool us into believing they are right.

But Paul--following Jesus, I do believe--dreams of an alternative.  That's us.  That's what church is meant to be: an alternative lifestyle to the sociopathic Me-and-My-Group-First, kill-or-be-killed thinking that passes for conventional wisdom these days.  We are meant to be an alternative, following the way of Jesus, to the life that is bent in on self.  We we meant to be a community that puts one another ahead of ourselves, knowing that the others in the circle are putting us before their own needs at the same time.  We are meant to be the proof that it is possible to live in this world and not succumb to the dog-eat-dog mentality that is shouted and tweeted at us around the clock.  We are Jesus' dog-feed-dog community, where each of us are called to lift each other up--not to get to a point of being "even" when we can be done and walk away, but where we can always keep going beyond the goodness shown to us... where we can always look for creative and new ways to encourage, to build up, and to support each other.  And yet, since there is no bean-counting in this community of Jesus, there is never a thought of "But I haven't been built up quite as much the person next to me..." but rather, we can keep looking at each other and saying, "We're square."

That's a beautiful vision--and that's what I want to live my life being a part of.  That feels like being fully alive.  That seems to me to be what we were made for, instead of the pathetic quest to puff myself up that the Loud Voices around us think passes for greatness.

And here's the thing: you are already free to begin living this way.  There is nothing stopping you, or me, right now, from beginning this chain reaction in community by starting to spend our energy encouraging and building others up.  Who knows what will come of it?  Who knows how it might unleash a movement of goodness on your family, community, congregation, or world?  Who knows how far a small commitment to building others up might go?

Maybe, it might never stop spiraling out at all.

Let's begin.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to dare to build others up without worrying first about ourselves, and at the same time, raise up others who will encourage us in turn as well.